Walther Hewel

Walther Hewel (2 January 1904-2 May 1945) was a diplomat of Nazi Germany and one of Adolf Hitler's close friends. He killed himself at the end of the Battle of Berlin in 1945.

Biography
Walther Hewel was born in Cologne, German Empire on 2 January 1904, the son of a cocoa factory owner. He became the 200th member of the Nazi Party, joining it at a young age; he took part in the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, Bavaria. He later worked as a coffee salesman and planter, and he organized a branch of the Nazi Party among German expatriates in Indonesia. During the 1930s, he returned to Nazi Germany, and he became a member of the diplomatic service, being sent to Spain; he was almost certainly an agent for Wilhelm Canaris' Abwehr intelligence agency. In 1939, he transcribed Adolf Hitler's conference with Emil Hacha at the same time as the Occupation of Czechoslovakia, and he became an ambassador without portfolio and Joachim von Ribbentrop's liaison with Hitler. He survived the 1944 plane crash in which Hans-Valentin Hube was killed, and he married the Red Cross nurse who rescued him. Hewel was a member of Hitler's inner circle until Hitler's 30 April 1945 suicide, and Hewel took an oath to kill himself after Hitler did so. Hewel bit a cyanide capsule and shot himself in the head on 2 May 1945 at the end of the Battle of Berlinn, despite having diplomatic immunity and an opportunity to leave Berlin alive.